Another brilliant observation

[Mark Mandel]

I see it as
 a- (alpha privative, 'without')
 [ noso- (as in "nosocomial infection", one acquired in hospital or
otherwise through medical treatment)
   gnos- ('know', but what happened to the -t- of the stem?
 ]
 -ic

m a m

On Sat, Jun 26, 2010 at 9:45 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 7:31 PM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> > /Studying the humanities improves your ability to read and write./ No
> >> > matter what you do in life, you will have a huge advantage if you can
> >> > read a paragraph and discern its meaning (a rarer talent than you
> >> > might suppose). You will have enormous power if you are the person in
> >> > the office who can write a clear and concise memo.
> >>
>
> Sounds very much like the rationale that the Jesuits gave, back in the
> '50's, for seven class-hours of Latin for four years, in addition to
> two voluntary years of five class-hours a week of Homeric Greek for
> anyone hoping to graduate at or near the top of his class and then,
> usually, himself becoming a Jesuit.
>
> it still gives me a frisson of pleasure, sixty years later, to be able
> to look at some inscription in Greek or in Latin and just *read* it.
> OTOH, I'm  buffaloed by the NYT's _anosognosic_ "someone who knows
> that something is wrong, but who doesn't know what it is." It's based
> on Classical Greek, not Homeric. But, nevertheless, one expects of
> oneself...
> --
> -Wilson
> –––
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"––a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> –Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org